How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

Just for curiosity really. Now we have the whole family home all day and everyone accessing school or work remotely, our rural ADSL really can’t cope - especially as so much of the stuff the schools are setting is useful/educational viewing of iPlayer or YouTube. Our 3.75mbps down and 0.5mbps up is fairly hopeless and when someone starts uploading documents it comes to a grinding halt. :disturbd:

Soooo, I have bought an add-on for my EE phone for unlimited data, fixed the phone to my dining room window and effectively created a second work hotspot for me and missus. It works really well with a Mac mini, a windows surface and an iPad attached to it. However I’ve been having strange fun juggling with radio signals, as because we are so remote this too is a problem. In the attached photo, the phone is receiving a signal that delivers about 7mbps down and 3mbps up. However, if I move the phone literally 3 inches up and 3 inches to the right, the download shots up to around 20mbps and the download collapses to about 0.7mbps.

I have tried various placements of the phone over the past week, before I brought the car cradle in I had it attached to my camera tripod with a phone mount. Again, moving the tripod only a few inches around the window space produces either a nice balance between down and up, or massive down and next to no up. There’s no middle ground, it’s always one or the other.

So who can tell me what is going on?!

For the record, I need up more than down because I’m doing a lot of video conferencing and Facebook live broadcasts for my church, so 6/3 works better for me than 20/0.7.

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/atta...1&d=1586432362

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

I don't think they would reduce speeds, but the amount of people at home using data has gone through the roof, especailly as some carriers have given extra data to customers to allow them to keep in touch during lock down.

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

It’s handy in a way, if I badly need a massive download in a hurry all I have to do is move my phone mount 3 inches up and to the right and the download speed gets 4x faster. If I’m Zooming or Facebook Live-ing (which is mostly what I need the extra bandwidth for), then I move the phone mount 3 inches down and to the left and my upload gets 10x faster. I’d love to have 24 down and 4 up at the same time but you can’t have everything I guess.

What I am curious to know is, is this a direct result of radio interference/weakened reception, or is it indirectly, with EE trying to throw in some clever bandwidth management based on the precise characteristics of the radio signal I’m getting at any given moment.

I’m tempted to assume the latter, as my upload and download characteristics change so precisely as I move the phone around that they appear to be behaving in accordance with a profile that’s been imposed on them. But really I haven’t a clue.

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

Does tis help Chris?
https://coverage.ee.co.uk/coverage/ee

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

Not really, though thanks for trying :D

I know I’m on the edge of coverage in my location. The 4g signal drops out completely if I go less than half a mile down the road.

What I’m curious about is how EE manages the data bandwidth it provides under weak signal conditions. I have discovered, when moving my phone only fractional distances around my dining room, that it switches between (approximately) 20 down / 0.5 up, or 6 down / 3 up. These two states are both so precise that it seems to me that EE’s network must be selecting some sort of connection profile based on very precise measurements of the signal I’m receiving.

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

Maybe it's switching the modulation depth according to the signal strength or SNR? This would explain a sharp change of data speeds.

Somewhat like VM's network does if the local SNR gets bad.

(SNR: Signal to Noise Ratio)

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

Now that’s the answer I was looking for :D

Because the alternative is that lockdown is driving me nuts and I’m seeing patterns where there are none :disturbd:

---------- Post added at 11:24 ---------- Previous post was at 11:08 ----------

Edit ... just discovered that if I open the window with the phone stuck to it, I can get 35 down and 7 up. Nice. :D

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

Sounds like you need some sort of antenna booster.

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

Yep. I'm resisting spending money on that sort of thing at the moment though. We are in one of the rural areas that qualifies for extra government support in Scotland's attempt to achieve 100% superfast broadband coverage by the end of next year. They have trialled 4g solutions, but as the signal is so patchy it can't be deployed community wide. It works in one location but not in others, and in few of the places it does work, is it fast enough to satisfy the requirements of 'super fast'.

There is a fibre upgrade going on at the exchange right now, but we're not scheduled to get it because this end of the exchange area is all served by EO lines and they're shy of erecting new cabs for some reason (goodness knows why, it's not like they're facing complex wayleave issues, or having to persuade the council to let them occupy busy pavements - everything around here is owned by the Forestry Commission, and the planning authority is the national park, which is so pro-rural business and connectivity that it tends to err on the side of granting planning permission even on occasions when it probably shouldn't).

Nevertheless, the fibre is pole mounted heading out of the village where the exchange is located and it gets within about 2 miles of here, so with the failure of the community 4g trial I'm holding out for the hope they will eventually pay for FTTP, to bring the pole-mounted fibre the rest of the way to our door.

---------- Post added at 13:19 ---------- Previous post was at 11:42 ----------

(edited)

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

My understanding of mobile networks is that, essentially, each provider has clumps of spectrum across various bands - some as low as 800Mhz, some well into the 60Ghz range (For a certain kind of 5G) and a bunch in between. Lower frequencies travel much further but have very little bandwidth compared to the higher frequencies that don't propagate as far but do carry much more data (no different to our 2.4Ghz/5Ghz wifi at home).

OFCOM has a neat site that lets you explore all of this here.

Most providers don't have a lot of contiguous spectrum either, each band is sliced and diced in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways, a side-effect of how its been auctioned piecemeal over the years as well as how the various providers have merged, reallocated use and so on.

Your phone or mobile device, depending on the chipset, antenna, which country it came from and how old it is, might not be able to access certain frequencies as well. Even if it can access all of the spectrum your provider has access to, it's unlikely to be able to use all of it at the same time. 4G/LTE does allow for "bonding" of those slices using Carrier Aggregation. Only so much can be aggregated at a time (Again it's very device specific), but when you try to make use of several slices of frequency across a wide spectrum, it's going to be a little funky.

Throw on top that all of your provider's other users are also using various bits of spectrum to various amounts and it shouldn't come as a huge surprise that moving your phone just a little bit might be enough to lose a weak (but otherwise empty/capable) frequency band and pick up another, stronger but more congested band.

Your device itself is as much of a transmitter as it is a receiver, so it also shouldn't come as a huge surprise that you happen to lock onto some frequencies that give you much more bandwidth in one direction, but less in another.

As with anything wireless, it's an utter gamble at any given moment how reliable it'll be. For all you know it wasn't moving your phone that made a difference but a truck passing by the transmitter a mile away.

I appreciate you're not looking to spend money if you don't have to, but you can get external fixed 4G antennas for use with a 4G modem/router. If it's looking like you're going to be stuck working from home for a while, it could be worth speaking to your employer(s) about them purchasing the equipment and getting you fitted out. For them an inlay of ~£150-200 is probably nothing.

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

Thank you, that was music to my nerd ears :D

As I’m self employed, and also a student, I have nobody to rely on for improvements to my internets except her majesty’s government :disturbd:

Re: How does 4G LTE manage download and upload speeds?
 

I have the same problem as above but didn't know you could get an external aerial for an iPhone.